Apple market share up or down, depending on who you ask

Apple's US sales were just fine in Q2'09. Alternately, Apple's US sales were …

Early PC market share numbers are out from both Gartner and IDC for the second quarter of 2009. Depending on who's numbers you trust more, though, Apple is either holding its own in US sales or experienced a drop in sales year-over-year to fall from fourth to fifth place.

According to Gartner, Apple had a slight unit sales growth year-over-year. When combined with an overall PC sales decline, it gave Apple 8.7 percent of the US PC market for calendar Q2. That's up slightly from 8.4 percent this same time last year, and up significantly from the 7.4 percent Gartner recorded for Apple last quarter. From Gartner's point of view, Apple holds its fourth place ranking that it ceded to netbook-maker Acer in Q4'08.

IDC, on the other hand, estimates that Apple unit sales declined 12.4 percent year-over-year, dropping to 7.6 percent share compared to 8.5 it recorded for Apple last year. Compared with rather impressive growth IDC calculated for Toshiba, it edged out Apple for the fourth place spot with 7.7 percent share, moving Apple down to number five in the US. IDC doesn't count shipments of x86 "servers," so that might account for some of the difference—but not for the more than 200,000 difference between the two firms numbers.

As for the rest of the top five, Dell continues to lose share, dropping to about 26 percent. HP made modest gains, and is just slightly behind Dell in US market share. Acer predictably made large gains in share, due to sales of its inexpensive netbooks—but those gains in sales also come with razor thin margins. Toshiba also had significant growth, though Gartner and IDC disagree by exactly how much—Gartner gives Toshiba a 6.8 percent share, compared to IDC's 7.7. Shipments from the rest of the manufacturers declined year-over-year, while he US market saw a 1-3 percent drop in shipments overall.

Worldwide, Apple has yet to crack the top five, so no numbers are available for its sales across the whole globe. However, if Apple reports sales of 2.5 million Macs during its earnings call next week, as analysts predict they will, that should mean about 3.5 percent of the worldwide market. Predictably, Dell saw a big drop, Acer saw big gains, and Toshiba, Lenovo, and worldwide market share leader HP also saw smaller, but significant gains. Between Gartner and IDC, worldwide sales dropped anywhere from 3-5 percent.

As long as the economy has yet to right itself, price will still be a major factor in purchasing decisions. While most recent Mac model introductions came with price cuts, particularly its notebook line, Apple's overall higher prices will still have an effect on Apple's ability to gain market share. At least from Gartner's perspective, Apple is still showing growth while the overall industry is still declining, which is still a positive for the company. And let's not forget the Apple still pulls in a healthy profit from its relatively meager share of the market.